For my sixth square of my pulled work embroidery sampler, I decided to do some faggot stitches. As with most of the other pulled work stitches, there are many different variations you can do with this stitch.

Faggot stitch is virtually a wave stitch that is worked diagonally. This stitch forms triangles that pull apart the threads of the fabric. I found the most important part of this stitch was at the ends of the rows, where it had to be worked in a particular way in order to ensure the tension continued to pull at the fabric threads evenly. For this reason I have drawn out my pattern for two “row changes” so that you can get the idea.

Faggot stitch is worked diagonally. The needle comes to the front of the fabric at the black dot and follows the direction of the arrows. The solid lines represent the thread on the front of the fabric and the dotted lines that on the back. The grid represents the thread count of the fabric.

Spaced faggot stitch is worked in a similar way as above, but the subsequent row is offset by one vertical and one horizontal thread of the fabric. This spacing can be difficult to count for the first time in a new row, but for subsequent rows it is easier. The result is a pretty diagonal cross that appears between the pulled threads, which you can see in the sampler below.

Spaced faggot stitch is also worked diagonally. In the same was as mentioned above, the needle follows the arrows.

The “row changes” should be worked in a similar way as the plain faggot stitch above to ensure the tension for the ends of the rows is even. If the tension is not even at the end of each row, then a conspicuous “blank” or un-pulled area appears which can look weird when using this technique as a filling.

My finished square looks like this:

The top left side is faggot stitch, the bottom right side is spaced faggot stitch.

As can be seen above, diagonally worked stitches struggle to fill in a square area completely as it is difficult to get them worked to the very edge of the piece. For this reason, it maybe important to think about the area to be filled before deciding on a particular pulled stitch to use.